“I’ll do my homework when you do yours” - 'The beginning of great change': Greta Thunberg hails school climate strikes
The global strike on 15 March is expected
to be the biggest yet with mobilisations in 150 cities. “It is not acceptable
that grown-ups are destroying the future right now,” said Jakob Blasel, a
high-school student. “Our goal to stop coal power in Germany and fossil energy
everywhere.”
Greta Thunberg is
hopeful the student climate strike on Friday can bring about positive change,
as young people in more and more countries join the protest movement she
started last summer as a lone campaigner outside the Swedish parliament. The 16-year-old
welcomed the huge mobilisation planned in the UK, which follows demonstrations
by tens of thousands of school and university students in Australia, Belgium,
Germany, the United States, Japan and more than a dozen other countries.
“I think it’s great
that England is joining the school strike in a major way this week. There has
been a number of real heroes on school strike, for instance in Scotland and
Ireland, for some time now. Such as Holly
Gillibrand and the ones in Cork with the epic sign saying ‘the emperor
is naked’,” she told the Guardian. With an even bigger
global mobilisation planned for 15 March, she feels the momentum is now
building. “I think enough people
have realised just how absurd the situation is. We are in the middle of the
biggest crisis in human history and basically nothing is being done to prevent
it. I think what we are seeing is the beginning of great changes and that is
very hopeful,” she wrote.
Thunberg has risen
rapidly in prominence and influence. In December, she spoke at the United
Nations climate conference, berating world leaders for behaving
like irresponsible children. Last month, she
had similarly
harsh words for the global business elite at Davos. She said: “Some people,
some companies, some decision-makers in particular, have known exactly what
priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable
amounts of money. And I think many of you here today belong to that group of
people.”
The movement she
started has morphed and grown around the world , and, at times, linked up with
older groups, including Extinction Rebellion, 350.org and Greenpeace. Next week she will
take the train – having decided not to fly due to the high carbon emissions of
aviation – to
speak at an event alongside Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the
European commission, in Brussels, and then on to Paris to join the school
strikes now expanding in France.
Veteran climate
campaigners are astonished by what has been achieved in such a short time. “The
movement that Greta launched is one of the most hopeful things in my 30 years
of working on the climate question. It throws the generational challenge of
global warming into its sharpest relief, and challenges adults to prove they
are, actually, adults. So many thanks to all the young people who are stepping
up,” said Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/15/the-beginning-of-great-change-greta-thunberg-hails-school-climate-strikes
